After the Fall
by Thorne Scratch
Summary: When a sorceress passes her powers on and resumes ordinary life, what is left?


Title: After the Fall

Summary: When a sorceress passes her power on and resumes ordinary life, what is left?

Warning & Disclaimer: Mostly het, some yaoi and a very small bit of yuri. Mention of a pairing that walks the fine line of incest. Square owns all characters.

Notes: The timeline on this is slightly confusing. I blame it on time compression, personally. It takes place in points between the Lunar Cry and the last battle in time compression, assuming that time in the time compressed world passed at the same rate as the regular world. 

__

In a city of magic   
That spins out of time   
Where God has no image   
And Man finds no grace   
Something inside me was seeking itself   
As I ran   
From a shadow who'd stolen my face

The farther you run   
The more you recall  
The loss of your innocence   
After the fall

~After the Fall, by October Project

She dreams, sometimes, that it is all right. That she has her Power again but no one will be hurt, that her children remember, and that time will proceed in one direction and never double back on itself again.

To her, the Power tastes like water from dark, secret places, cold from never seeing the sun. When she drinks it deep, it swirls in her veins the same way the currents swirled in the sea, and she dreams of ancient oceans from times far past. They say that Hyne made the oceans with Her tears but no one can remember what would cause a goddess to cry. The only things old enough these days to rival the time of Hyne are the glaciers and ice at Trabia, holding their secrets the same way they hold the water from the days the goddess walked the world. When she had summoned the Power, she could feel crystals of ice coalescing in her fingertips and she had known that she held the goddess in her hands.

In her dream, she can hear her children laughing, but she can't find them. Every time she enters a room, they seem to have just left it, to be a mere few foot-steps ahead of her. As she walks through the rooms, she begins to worry and it no longer feels like a simple game of hide and seek. Clouds pass over the sun and she shivers with anxiety.

Eventually, she finds herself searching outside for them and there is a storm coming in over the ocean, painting the sky with the gunmetal colors of the wind and water. Their voices become louder, and suddenly she realizes her children are not laughing, they are screaming. As she stumbles onto the beach, she realizes it is because she herself has been hurting them all along.

The water is rising in one, long, terrifying line, leaving a naked beach with her the only one on it. She feels the Power move inside her like an unborn child, like the storm, and she screams as the water comes down and fills her, rushing in through her ears, her mouth, her nose---

She wakes up.

*** 

Every night, Edea lights candles and sends them away on the tide.

Her father was a sailor and he told her that her mother was a dark-eyed, dark-haired woman from an island port where they dove for pearls. He spent one week's leave in her arms and sailed away for three years; when he returned as a young captain, there was nothing but a dark-haired, dark-eyed girl-child, wearing a pearl ring on a chain-- the same ring he had bought and given the young woman. 

Pearls for tears, her father said. She has the ring still.

He brought her back with him on his ship and sometimes she still remembers being held safe in her father's arms, watching a shower of shooting stars while the ocean spray wet her face and she laughed with delight. Sailors take care of their dead, he told her, and to make sure that their loved ones have something to guide them home, sailors light candles and set them adrift for those who the sea takes and those who are lost. 

If her husband finds it strange to buy boxes of white candles and matches, he never says so. Every morning, he picks up flat pieces of driftwood at low tide and heaps it in a basket that he never lets run empty. During the first days after she had returned, he would let her lean on him as they walked down to the beach each evening, wrapping shawls around her shoulders, fussing, and making endless cups of tea. Afterwards, she would be so exhausted that he would have to almost carry her back up.

Now, she can walk up and down on her own. But he never ceases to wait for her at the top of the stairs, smoking a pipe more often than not. She marks the fire-fly ember of it in the dark, catches a wisp of the tobacco scent, and feels comforted. 

Sometimes, it feels strange. She has thought before that she has used up all her luck. A laughing father, a good man for a husband, sorceress power in her veins, children her own barren body could not bring forth, a home by the sea. Now, the father she loved is long dead and her home by the sea is self-imposed exile from those who remember the terror of her reign. The children she kissed and bathed and rocked to sleep are far away and she is only a figure in their dreams, sometimes frightening, sometimes only faceless. 

The place in her mind where she used to feel her Power feels empty and it aches dully when it storms, a scabbed-over wound instead of the raw, bleeding hole that she awoke to on the Galbadian Garden. It hadn't made sense then what was wrong; she had thought only of being free of Ultimecia. Now she can't even cool the water held in her cupped palms anymore, let alone call the ice and the goddess.

Her husband, her Cid is still here, a bright scrap of her previous life, present against all the odds. Every morning, the first thing she does is to wake before him, touch his brow where the hair is receding, and to whisper an apology. He is the last of her luck and she is grateful for even that. 

Some mornings, when it is bright and sunny and clear, it takes her a few moments to remember the hole inside her. On those mornings, it is easier to believe that she does not miss her what she used to be. And she doesn't tell anyone about the sweet effortlessness of passing through walls like air, or how it felt when the Power rushed out of her like draining water, or how she heard Seifer screaming for her as Ultimecia drew him in and the world went black and dry, and his voice was both that of a Knight and a child of four. 

"Would you like to come with me to the Garden?" her husband asks at times. His eyes are anxious, but he knows how she will answer. _No, not yet, I'm sorry, I'm not ready._

The sin is too much. No matter what anyone says about overpowering and superior strength and innate goodness, she knows the truth. No one can accept the Power without wanting it at least a little. No one loses all of themselves in the sorceress dreams. Part of her had to have wanted what she wrought, part of her enjoyed the destruction, and sometimes she still dreams at night of a world where she succeeded. 

It is because of this she cannot face the world and she prefers her exile. Every evening, she lights candles and sends them bobbing away. Her father taught her to light the first one for her mother, and then she lit them for both her father and mother. And now she simply lights as many as she can, for the people she knows that she killed and all the nameless faces that she saw through Ultimecia's eyes, those who will be born long after she dies.

Fifty candles to a box, innumerable sticks tossed up on the shore, at least a box a night, every night. She will live a great many years because the Power has touched her, and even so it will never be enough.

***

Her memory has strange holes in it but being around the orphanage brings back more and more each day. Cid smiles when she recalls things from the past, and so she is always careful to drop something new each evening. She points out the place where they had to paint over Zell's attempts at scribbling on the walls in the children's bedrooms; she mentions how Ellone could always be trusted to have the table set neatly, she identifies a stack of old watercolor pictures as Selphie's. 

When Edea is picking over the reels of thread in her sewing basket she realizes they are mostly yellow and black, blue and gray, for sewing up the rips in the clothing Squall and Seifer always managed to make. She doesn't mention this to her husband, though.

Sometimes she dreams of Seifer but more often, she thinks of him when she is awake. All of her children were lovely to her, but she knows too well what an exceptionally beautiful young man he became. She would run her hands through the soft crown of his hair when he sat at her feet, and he burned like the sun in her bed, heated lips and warm hands and golden all over. He even favored fire for his magic although his eyes were as pale as ice, and it had seemed as if he had been made for her. She had not questioned then, how it had seemed as though he had been waiting for her and she for him.

Her husband knows what she and Seifer were. They never speak of it.

However, Ralf Martine, old college friend and recent ex-headmaster of Galbadia, brings it up on a visit. They are sitting in the flower field and trying a picnic for old time's sake, although no one can eat much as they wait to hear back from White SeeD and her children in Esthar. Her husband has gone back to the house for more lemonade and Ralf has just asked her, why, why Seifer, why him as a Knight?

"I don't know," she replies, and it is nothing but the truth. "I didn't remember him exactly, only that…" She trails off. Only that he needed her, or had needed her before in some deep and fundamental way. Some part of her had known him, but it had all gone wrong; all she remembers was sensing his anger and realizing the raw flare of potential like a flame in the dark.

"Why wasn't he released when you were? Or at least, why didn't he pass to the girl?"

The words feel clumsy, tripping from her mouth like excuses although Ralf's tone has no accusation. "Ultimecia… something was wrong. Ultimecia is working through time. And he…" It is hard to say his name. It is hard to say the information she has gleaned through old books and older words. 

She breathes deeply. "In the past, most sorceresses fought to keep from passing their power. That's why they first started taking Knights, to defend them, and in return they would share some of their power. So, the sorceresses almost always outlived their Knights since they could live without the Knights but the Knights rarely lived without them. It's somewhat like a junction."

"You know, I'm rather glad we didn't use those in Galbadia," Ralf says absently. He pulls up blades of grass and shreds them with his fingers. "How do any of the sorceresses pass, then?"

Edea remembers how losing the battle felt like her ice was melting and all that made her who she was had been burned away. "They can't die peacefully until they pass their power, so if a sorceress is hurt badly enough, she has no choice. It's harder for the Knights to know what's going on once their sorceress passes, especially if they were closely joined to their sorceress. Usually, they die. If Ultimecia hadn't taken him, he probably would have." 

Ralf frowns and speaks very carefully. "Were you…?"

She looks past him, at a tall spike of blue flowers that are moving gently in the breeze. "We were quite closely joined. I had raised him and we were lovers while I had him, if that's what you're asking." After a few minutes, she can look at him again, and she sees him putting the pieces together.

Cid returns and pours them each a new cup. He seems to know instinctually whom they are talking about. "When I realized that they were forgetting things, I thought about talking to them," he remarks quietly, and sets the lemonade down on the cloth. "But I thought it would make it more difficult for them to know they had history with Edea, if they were to meet her in battle. And at the Garden, I couldn't be their father anymore."

Ralf looks at both of them with sympathy and pity as he goes about absorbing this new information. "It must have been very hard for you." 

He doesn't specify any further. That's probably for the best, as it is one of the biggest understatements possible. 

For the first time, she is grateful that all those who are touched by the Power are barren and that their wombs are incapable of bringing forth life.

Shame is such a tiring emotion, almost as much as anger. It takes all her energy. She will have a lifetime to think about what she's done and how she would change it, or she will if they manage to stop the threat from the future. It doesn't seem like much of a reward. Right now, they have to focus on saving humanity. No matter if it was her fault for involving Seifer or not, there is the question of the present and she can't let past feelings or events affect their plans. 

Cid told her one night that he knew Seifer and Squall had been sleeping together at points, off and on until Squall was SeeD and everything changed. "Toramas in heat," was the way he dryly put it, and then he was quiet for a long time while he cleaned his spectacles unnecessarily. 

She hopes Squall can find Seifer, bring him back somehow. She knows they are both very young and still see things in black and white. But she also knows that neither of them let go very easily, the same strength of child-fingers and child-words transferring as they grew. 

Seifer's first word, or at least the first one he spoke in the orphanage--- "No!" And he would shout it, wailing it out terribly earnest, waving his hands in the air furiously. He fought her once, when she had been angry with the attempted interference of the pale girl and dark boy who dogged his footsteps like determined shadows. She remembers hurting him quite badly for the transgression, watching him jerk and writhe on marble floors. And Squall--- Squall knows better than anyone how it feels to lose someone, even a rival. 

She does not disillusion herself to think there is not hatred in both boys for each other. They can hate each other but that does not change the fact they probably know each other better than anyone else. No matter what they think, they are the most constant presences in each other's lives. She hopes Squall can have a sense of perspective about this.

Her head has begun to hurt and she looks up at the sky. "It's going to rain soon."

To confirm this, a few fat droplets splatter and make dark circles on the tablecloth. Ralf and Cid begin to pack the plates and cups in the basket, she folds the cloth over one arm. Overhead, they hear a mournful cry, a shadow passes over them, and a crow alights on a stump nearby. 

It stares at them with bright inquisitive eyes and ruffles oil-dark feathers. She thinks of the sensation of feathers against her chest, their soft rustle when a young man with golden hair breathed on them, and she feels dizzy. She hurries to walk between Cid and Ralf, and doesn't look back.

That night, for a little while, she dreams of flying. She dreams of the green-crackle of magic creeping beneath her skin, rising from her back in great icy wings as she soars joyfully over an ocean dotted with whitecaps.

Mostly though, she dreams of falling. She dreams of the terrible downward tumble, the rush of wind through her hair and her hands stretched out helpless to stop the fall. Everything is a blur and no one is there to catch her.

When she wakes up, she listens to the rain for a long time, dry-eyed. She can hear the crows calling and her shoulders itch. She counts seven different calls before she falls asleep again, seven for a secret never to be told. 

But everyone knows hers.

***

The children had stopped by twice after her dispossession and initial catching-up. They spoke mainly of the plans at hand and when the conversation dwindled, she discovered that they all played cards and she was able to forget herself for an hour with that. Then there was Esthar and the Lunar Cry and no real time for visits.

In between those times though, Irvine once seeks her out by himself. She is standing on the beach and thinking about how the ocean never freezes but smashes up the little ridges of ice that dare to form at its edge in a quiet low tide. She hears his footsteps on the rocks, the same light-footed tread as when he was a child trying to avoid an early bedtime, but she hides her smile behind her hand and keeps quiet.

His questions are easy and predictable. Any messages for White SeeD? No, Cid is taking care of that. The others would like to know about how they came to be at the orphanage, is there any information he can tell them, any knowledge of parents? Of course, she has some information and she will write it down for them, although she should probably tell them in person. Does she remember the time they set off fireworks at the beach and got in trouble? Yes, yes, and they all deserved to be spanked soundly for it, although as she recalls, she only made them go to bed early for a week.

After some comfortable silence, she begins to ask her own questions, starting the same way he had, with simple and easy things. When did they all meet again? Where is Rinoa from? What was Zell thinking with that outlandish tattoo and when was the last time Irvine has had a haircut?

Soon, the questions become harder, although she wants to know the answers more than ever. Where they hurt badly when imprisoned after the assassination attempt? No, mostly interrogated, although he knows Squall was treated more harshly than the rest and underwent some sort of torture as team leader. He wasn't with the main group. What about during the fight between Galbadia and Balamb? Yes, there were causalities but he didn't know too much about them because he had been with the main group infiltrating Galbadia Garden.

When did he remember his childhood and who she was and who the others were? He's always known; he has a good memory. He was simply sent to a different Garden and never ran into the others. Do any of the others remember? No, and he explains what they worked out about the Guardian Forces, the price paid in exchange for power, and this is just one more thing that she adds to her list of regrets. 

Who remembers the most? He and Selphie, she can recall a surprising amount of information when she is not junctioned and besides, he has been keeping a journal ever since he was nine. Who remembers the least? Squall and Quistis, since they have been using the GF's the longest and most intensively. 

He pauses and says in a neutral tone that Seifer probably has a lot of trouble as well, because Seifer had been using the GF's along with Quistis, a year longer than Squall, although he hasn't had a chance to confirm too much.

Although she knows he is carefully stepping around the forbidden topic of what she and Seifer were to each other, all she can think of is Seifer and Squall's eternal battles, and how determined Squall must have been to match up to Seifer in that respect. When she mentions as much to Irvine, he nods, laughs, and tells her the story of the matching scars as heard from Quistis and Zell. He is good enough with words that he manages to make it sound almost light-hearted. And in a way, she supposes it was to them--- they used to play tackle-tag on the sand and the fight doesn't sound much different, simply giving them blades to strike with as well as fists.

Finally, she asks her own real question, the important one.

"How can you forgive me?" 

The sun is getting low in the sky and the afternoon light that spills on their laps is as heavy and golden as summer honey. The tide is just beginning to rise again and she remembers how Quistis and Selphie would run and run to try and pick up every shell, heedless of the fact there would be more in the morning. She folds her hands in her lap and waits for his answer.

Irvine just grins, lopsidedly. He is resting on the folded pillow of his coat and has a long stem of grass between his teeth. His hat sits on his chest and he rubs one finger around the brim. " How can't we? It wasn't like you were yourself, Matron. Even if most of us didn't know that right away, it doesn't mean you're to blame."

"But I am," she says, and is mildly, surreally amused to hear herself fall into the same quietly reproving tone she used more than ten years ago when speaking to any of the children when they argued. "I hurt you all and in spite of who I was--- _because_ of who I was, it is not something to be dismissed."

"That's why, too. You were the closest thing all of us had to a mother. I mean, we don't remember it all, but we don't want it to ruin the fact that you were the only thing that kept us alive when we were knee-high. You didn't know when you fought us. And except for me, we didn't know either, until the end. It's what we've been trained to do and what Ultimecia had you do." He stops for a moment, forehead crinkled in thought. "You've said she didn't have complete control. And you know, you coulda just ordered us killed when we were captured. But you kept us alive, didn't you?" 

"I used---"

"Yeah, yeah. I know. Matron, I just…" Whatever he is trying to say, it is hard for him. He takes a deep breath. "Matron, I know you're probably thinking that by creating SeeD to fight the sorceress succession, you ruined our lives. The thing is, you didn't. All of us _chose_ to go to the Gardens after adoption except for Squall and Seifer, and they probably would have ended up there anyway if they had been adopted. All of us were trained to fight because we wanted to. I didn't want to be the sharpshooter at the parade but I took the shot anyway, even though I knew who you were." He shakes his head and rubs the back of his neck. "If anything, that makes me the guilty one."

"Irvine…" He is very still, as though awaiting a blow. She puts one hand over his and when did they get so large? She can tell that he still bites his thumbnail. "You did the right thing. It doesn't make you guilty, only a braver person than many others would have been." 

And she feels some tension about him relax and it comes to her that this is probably why he came to find her, for this confession alone.

The purpose of SeeD was to control the sorceresses, to prevent the prophecy of Ultimecia. They had thought they were so ahead of things, with the Gardens, with developing use of magic and Guardian Forces, with baubles to suppress the sorceress power. And when the Power rose inside her, she had thought they would be ready, only to discover that the future was not half as predictable as they thought.

Irvine sits up. "I should get back. I'll tell them the things you said." He has gotten a little sunburned across his nose and she remembers that he would always break out in freckles during the summer. 

As they walk back up the rock stairs to the orphanage, she cannot help but ask. "Did you know the details of the mission before you were assigned?"

It takes him seven stairs to reply. "Yeah. But I tried not to think about it." He looks at her with the peculiar absolute confidence of the young. "I knew you'd take care of things, Matron. You always did."

***

The worst dreams are not the nightmares.

Edea is lying in her husband's arms, warm, drowsy, and they are both fully clothed and celebrating the finish of the construction on their cottage, to make it big enough to for the children they hope will come. There is still a faint hint of the smells of building: freshly cut wood, paint, and the tang of brick mortar. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see an unopened bottle of champagne sitting in a bucket of now-tepid water. Neither of them was able to find the corkscrew.

When he reaches down to kiss her, she eludes him, hiding her face and laughing against his chest. "Woman, that is mine by right of marriage," he says mock-pompously, and she can hear rather than see his smile as he settles for kissing her ear. "How many again?"

"You have to say please," she says in return, stroking the soft material of his shirt. "And nothing too unmanageable. Maybe twenty to start with."

"Nothing unmanageable indeed." His hand mirrors her, combing through her hair instead. "Boys or girls? Or both?"

"Both," she agrees and rolls over to kiss him back. The world is a cresting wave of tangled linen and she turns around.

She is lying languidly in a young man's arms and the room is quite cold. Perhaps it is more correct to say he is lying in _her_ arms, sprawled together naked, wide-legged, slumped in the abandonment of pleasure. He is the next thing to asleep and she is not, he is tan and contrasts against her paleness, neither of them know who the other really is. 

There is pleasure in lying still. The young man turns his head slightly, seeks her breasts with his mouth as blindly instinctive as an infant, but not with an infant's touch or intent. "Please," he breathes, then turns from her and flings one arm over his face. His other hand explores the sheets, looking for something only he can see.

Perhaps she will wake him soon. She can feel the Power flowering in her and it starts at her shoulders and seeps downwards to where Hyne cut open all girls and women, waking her nerves and making everything overly sensitive. Perhaps she will make him say please again, make him say it many, many times. She pushes herself higher and turns around.

She is lying on a bed next to someone and she can tell she is in a hospital, or an infirmary of some type. Everything is neutral, everything is white. There is the faintest tingle of magic in the air that has nothing to do with her own Power, something green and curative, kept captive in glass bottles and junction plates. This distracts her from the person next to her and she does not notice the subtle signs of wrongness at first.

An arm draped around her waist. Hair tickling her neck. But the arm that she sees is too slender, the hand too fine to be that of her husband or her knight. The wisp of hair is as silky and black as the feathers of crows. She catches a flash of blue fabric and turns slowly.

The girl who is lying next to her is also dark-haired and dark-eyed and for a moment, she doesn't know if this girl is her or she is this girl. The girl looks at her with eyes that slowly wash over with gold, her hair stirring in an invisible breeze. Terror freezes her tongue to the roof of her mouth, her words as cold, hard lumps in her throat, her body stock still on the bed. She knows then, who this girl is and why they are in an infirmary.

(_fithos_)

The girl's face is as blank as slate, and her mouth opens and closes several times before words come out. "You gave this to me," the girl says slowly, her arms and legs moving in short stiff jerks like a puppet. "Why did you give this to me?" 

(_lusec_)

Voices are beginning to speak in tones that are a shade too soft to hear, whispering from all corners of the room in long-dead languages, syllables dusty from stretching far back into time's existence. The air in the room is getting colder. She can see her breath hovering in white plumes; the metal table is rimed with ice crystals. A glass of water is sitting by the bed; it freezes and then shatters with a sound like a gunshot.

(_wecos_)

"Do you want it back?" The girl reaches out, laces their hands together, places them on her breast. She can feel the girl's heartbeat--- no, she can feel two heartbeats. There is something inside the girl. _Someone_. The girl leans forward with her hot golden eyes, but the lips that touch her own are like ice and they pull her breath away in one long, crystalline draught.

(_VINOSEC_.)

Over the girl's shoulder she can see flowers twining up the wall as they are created out of ice, transparent and perfect with a spark of sorceress magic at the heart of every one. Their petals break free in distinct shards of ice and instead of falling to the floor, they float impossibly. And _Hyne_, she does want it back, she aches for it, burns for it. And the agony is well worth the ecstasy as it begins to flow from the girl's mouth to her own, _this is me, that is what I am, ever since I was a child, please give it back…_

But all she can say is "Please, please…" and not know exactly what she is asking for; then she feels her body start to shatter. She is not made for this anymore, she is no longer the right vessel. But even shattering brings joy because this is her and she is coming home again. She turns around.

She falls through time and watches herself grow small. Her father lies dying at the feet of a woman who screams blood and magic; she herself is huddled in a dazed heap a short distance from her father, thrown from his arms when the magic hit him. The woman looks all the way through her with golden eyes that are weeping wet, red tears; there is a screaming noise of magic flying through the air and it hits her squarely the same way it hit her father, even as she uselessly flings her arms before her face. But instead of destroying her the same way it destroyed her father, it begins to sink into her skin, cold but painless, and she has the goddess in her hands. The woman's eyes widen and--

It is not a nightmare.

The dream doesn't end there, ever. Sometimes she is hurt by her husband, her knight, the girl and the woman inside the girl. Sometimes she hurts them. Sometimes it is her own self in different incarnations who hurts her, the sorceress and the child of five. Sometimes there is no pain at all and she feels joy and freedom, only to wake and realize the truth of things. 

No matter what, she always wakes up. No matter what, she can only say one thing as she dreams.

"Please, please, please…"

She will wake up. She will. 

She turns around.

***

"Besides the Heartilly girl, I've never really treated anything dealing with this before," the doctor says dubiously. "You do show typical withdrawal symptoms though. How do you feel?"

"Cold," Edea admits, "and a little tired. I don't think it's necessary to worry too much, doctor. I just wanted to know your observations on the symptoms of Guardian Force withdrawal."

Because she would not go to the doctor, the doctor comes to her, accompanied with a SeeD she has never met. The SeeD is currently standing against the wall, impeccably clad in the dark blue uniform with her eyes politely averted. The room has photographs scattered around it, mostly taken by Cid and Ralf and mostly of the children, and the SeeD glances at each as though mentally trying to reconcile Seifer with the tow-headed two year old, before moving on to Squall's and then lingering slightly longer on Quistis's, leaning forward just a bit.

"You're running similar symptoms actually, now that you bring my attention to it." The doctor has an inward-glancing look, as though going through mental textbooks and coming up short. "Of course, we know as little about the Guardian Forces as we do about the mechanics of sorceress power."

"I understand." She saw the SeeD's attention flicker at certain words in the conversation, storing away information and giving virtually no sign of it. Perhaps the girl herself is junctioned, with painless holes in her mind that are growing wider each day. For now she ignores the slide of the girl's eyes to the doctor; she can't ask the question that she wants to, not exactly, so she goes in a roundabout way. "It's of your opinion though that repossession is impossible?"

Another flicker from the SeeD. The doctor shrugs. "I'm not really backed with enough knowledge to make that call. But bearing in mind the fact you passed your sorceress powers on, I imagine not."

Careful, now. Careful not to cut herself on her own words. "So, there's no chance of ever regaining the passed powers either."

"Medical history shows no record of a sorceress ever regaining the magical powers she passes on. This, of course, is due to the fact that eighty percent of past sorceresses were passing their powers while fatally wounded and died soon after. As I said before, there is not much knowledge but since succession seems to be limited to those with a certain genetic structure, not to mention an affinity for…"

She lets the words drift past her like water after the initial confirmation, and she cannot give an exact name to the feeling that pervades her. Termination, she supposes, something like a full stop. News of an expected death of someone not-quite closely related. There is a shaft of sunlight making a pale-gold puddle on the floor by the window; it fades in and out as clouds pass over the sun.

"…At any rate, we have several research books that entail similar cases and details in the Garden library. Xu, could you please remind me to find these books for the headmaster when we return?"

The SeeD salutes crisply, gaze snapping away from the photographs. "Yes, Doctor Kadowaki."

There is warmth in the doctor's gaze when they rise to leave, and warmth in the hand that briefly touches her shoulder. No one touches her much these days except her husband, and even his hands have a questioning feel to them at times, not hesitance exactly but always with a sort of testing query to them. Except for what she permitted her knight, no one much touched her during her sorceress reign either. It was preferable to be aloof then, anyway.

"We'll have you back to normal soon," says the doctor, smiling as she leaves.

Normalcy. What a strange idea, that; she has not been normal for as long as she can remember.

***

It's easier to tell the truth by the ocean. 

She says as much to her husband as they walk. The sound and size of the ocean dwarfs any words that come out; it's easier to pretend that the words spoken were not so important after all. Her father told her that the ocean has existed for too long to ever be surprised, and there is nothing that cannot be said to a curling wave that races towards the horizon.

They are both barefoot. Her dress has been kilted up to keep the hem dry and he has rolled up the cuffs of his trousers to mid-calf. One pleasure that she is still getting used to is the freedom of her hair and legs. Edea remembers her hair billowing in dark skeins without a breath of wind, but there was always the weight of the headdress, gold and lacquer and pressing her down until she wanted to give in to gravity and lay her head against the cold stone floors. Her clothes were dark and rich and looked best when she was absolutely motionless, binding her into stone-still regality.

Now she can comb her hair with her fingers and toss her head easily; now she can take running steps without impediment. She still wears black most of the time, not for mourning but because it is simpler to wear her old clothing than it is to go out and try to purchase new dresses. In light of recent events, an updated wardrobe seems very insignificant indeed.

"You shouldn't feel badly," her husband says, "if you miss everything." He doesn't elaborate on what everything is, not because he is prone to making dramatic statements but because he prefers simplicity. He probably _does_ mean everything, from sorceress power to governments under her thumb to the old furniture they recently threw away because they had discovered wood rot from the damp sea air.

She picks up a shell because it gives her more time to think; the outside is a dull black and pitted with the white remains of barnacles, but the inside is mother of pearl, a muted shine of all colors. "We found a conch once, didn't we?" she says. And then, "Please don't be so kind."

He stoops to pick up an especially gnarled piece of driftwood and she knows she will see it again, perhaps later this evening when she will soften the bottom of a candle and stick it to the wood with its own melted wax before lighting the wick and giving it to the tide. There are a few barnacles on it as well, and she wonders, idly, where it has been and how long it has been away from solid land. The sea likes to take things and rarely gives them back.

"I don't blame you," he says. Underneath the weathered gray of the outside of the wood, there are still streaks of red-brown, the exact color of his hair.

"You _should_," she replies and her words are raw, like the bite of salt in an open wound, like swallowing seawater, like drowning and bleeding and the sea all around her. This is truth. "You should. You of all people." She is not surprised to find herself crying; some days, it seems all she does is hold back. The anger she feels though, that is something both new and familiar at the same time. "You deserve to."

"I didn't marry you so I could punish you." He looks almost ridiculous right now, with his cuffs rolled up and his sweater vest and the way he holds the wood away from himself almost fussily, so not to dirty his clothes. Looking at him, she loves him so much that she hurts with it, swelling up in her chest like oxygen filling her drowning lungs. "I don't want to."

"You should," she repeats, the anger having crested and drained away. He has the right to play martyr, it's the only normal reaction to the past thirteen years and she has expected him to. Having him decline the role is both frustrating and infinitely, terribly, wonderfully relieving at the same time.

"When I didn't approve Seifer for SeeD," her husband says slowly, "I said I wanted SeeDs who would obey orders but could think on their own. I thought Squall would be the better choice because he would obey to the letter and perhaps I could explain later… Seifer was apt to just act and he could be amazingly lucky, so if he decided to forget the plans and just try to go for the kill…" His voice stumbles, picks itself up, continues. "Every time I approved someone, I always wondered what it would be like if they were the one to kill you. What I would do. And after the first few, I couldn't keep up with all the faces and it felt so wrong not to. Not to know."

And she could tell him so many things now, with all this truth hanging in the air between them like condensation and not-yet rain, even if they are things he already knows. That she watched as someone else moved her hands and mouth but that sometimes it was she who was moving them. That she trembled to think of the world she had sought to make but that sometimes it seemed like a good thing, the only _right_ thing, to get rid of everyone in this terrible place where terrible things could happen to people who only tried to do good and protect their children. 

That given the chance and less control, she would lay hands on the girl, Rinoa, seize her shoulders and shake and shake and shake until things were right again, safe beneath her skin; that she would drink it down like water until she is swollen with what is _hers_ by right. 

That when she was five, she killed a woman who was no longer a sorceress with ice from her own hands, and then laid those hands on her father's body, tried to bring him back, and then wept until they found her.

That thirteen years ago, she laid her hands on another woman before she knew who that woman was, took the Power, and nearly ended the world.

"It's all right," he says. "It's all right." 

The waves are loud, breaking like thunder on the beach and she speaks quietly, but he never asks her to repeat anything. She looks at different things while she speaks-- the horizon, the shell she carries, the wood he carries, clumps of seaweed, birds in flight-- once, his eyes, but not for long. At some point her voice doesn't give out, but the words stop coming and she simply stops talking. 

"I love you, you know," he says after a while, and takes her hand.

She curls her fingers around his in return and they keep on walking, stepping together to the same cadence.

***

All there is to do now is to hope and wait.

She can't sleep, and so she walks around and around the cobbled courtyard. When she finally sits on a porch chair and closes her eyes she dreams of Hyne, and Hyne looks like her mother.

__

The night I gave birth to you, there was a storm coming in, Hyne-Mother says thoughtfully, and tucks a flyaway strand of long dark hair behind Her left ear. _I dreamed of water and seeing the snow your father had told me about it. But of course, I never did_.

When Hyne speaks, she hears it twice like an echo, words in her ears and in her mind, like her mother and like something more. She realizes that they are not speaking in the language she is accustomed to; this is something much more ancient and much more powerful, a language that is not even dependent on dry clumsy things like words.

They are standing in the middle of a vast desert, surrounded on all sides by cracked soil that extends all the way out to the horizon. Aside from the two of them, there is no sign of life, no plants or the small creatures that manage to eke out a living even in wastelands such as these. The wind is at their backs and the sun beats down from above, a different shape and color from the sun she is used to. Perhaps they too have gone to some different time, although she does not know if this is the past or the future.

It is difficult to look directly at Hyne; She is blurred like a figure glimpsed through heat, Her boundaries constantly changing and realigning. Her mother's face lies on top like a shifting mask; around the edges the goddess's face glimmers like phosphorescence on an ocean tide. Perhaps it is wise not to look too directly at Hyne's face anyway, a goddess can be merciful, but She can have two sides. 

__

You of My chosen children, Hyne continues. She bends and scoops a handful of dust from the ground and lets it sift through Her fingers like an hourglass_. I made everyone from this, but I touched you with something more. My special daughters were placed in the kiln and fired in flames so that they could be My vessels for what I would give them._ She rubs her hands together, feeling the dust, and smiles; Edea can feel the warmth radiating off it like the sun.

"Mother…" she begins, and then stops. "Lady. I don't think I am what you say I am."

Hyne shakes Her head, and it feels almost as though the ground is trembling in sync with this motion. Perhaps this is how Hyne made the firmaments and everything else, with one good shake of Her celestial head and a striding walk across the universe. _Ask your question or speak your desire, child. I stand outside time and I rarely cross the boundaries I Myself drew before your world's conception, even for My chosen. Speak so I may return._

There is so much to ask for. There is so much to ask about. Edea's hands tingle like frostbite and cool arcs of Power writhe beneath the skin of her temples, curling into the patterns that mark Hyne's children. And here in this dry place, she has lost all her words.

"Will it be all right?" she finally asks, and her voice is helpless and thin, young to her own ears, and she has not felt young for a long time. Her question could mean so many things and she intends it that way, for there is nothing else _to_ ask. 

Hyne looks up at the sky for a long time before answering, and when She lowers Her face, Her eyes have the sun burned into each iris. Hyne's eyes are so bright, twin splashes of molten gold, that at first Edea cannot track the sound of water splattering to the ground; it takes her a few seconds to recognize the water as tears. A few hold their surface tension, trembling and shining like diamonds. And she realizes that she must be in the past after all, because here is Hyne and here is the beginning of the ocean that she will someday live beside. The sound of a goddess weeping is something very much like the wind.

__

My daughter is so tired of repeating, Hyne murmurs as quiet as thunder breaking, as loud as a single flower dying, and Edea knows Hyne is speaking to a woman far in the future. _My children do great things and terrible things, and often they are the same. And yet, all of my children return to me as dust and we begin again._

Perhaps time tumbles forward or perhaps Hyne's sorrow simply overwhelms, and the sea of tears rises to Hyne's breathing, water flowing until that is all there is to be seen. They rise together, she and Hyne, standing on water as though it is of no consequence at all. And indeed, why should it be?

__

Nothing but a handful of dust, the goddess does not-quite sing. She realizes that she is holding the goddess's hand like a child walking with her mother, it feels quite natural to do so_. And of all that you can ask, you ask me this question_.

Will it be all right, though? Will you make it all right? She moves her mouth to speak, nothing comes out. Perhaps she should not be so surprised, there is usually only one chance for these sort of things. Far away from them, a wall of water is mounting, hurtling towards them in the same rising line that she has dreamed about so many times. She feels nothing but an odd sort of calm, she knows Hyne will answer her and until then, nothing that happens matters. 

Her skirt is wet, and she looks down. The water she had been standing on is rising rapidly, moving past her knees now and starting to lap at her waist. Perhaps Hyne is growing taller, assuming Her true form again, or perhaps Edea is growing smaller. Or perhaps she is sinking into the ocean now, for it is true that mortals often cannot stand where goddesses do. 

It doesn't matter. She waits. Somehow, they are still holding hands.

Hyne smiles down at her as they separate when the wall of water falls upon her, catches her up, and swirls her body in its salt-warm embrace. Above her, the light from Hyne's eyes is nearly blinding, blazing like the sun has split and descended in her face, crying something like light made water or water made light. 

__

Go in peace, child, the goddess says in not a murmur and not a song but something that is simply more, the way Hyne is simply more than everything and everyone. _It will be all right. It will finish and I will call you. You and all my daughters._

And the ocean takes her under; but drowning is breathing, and in the deepness she is not lost because there are a hundred thousand candle-lights shining, shining like new life.

She wakes up crying with the sun in her face, golden and glorious. Her husband strokes her hair gently and holds her as the dream lets go. He thinks she is weeping for the children, so far away in time, and his own tears are warm against her brow and when she touches one with her fingertip, it reminds her of the ocean water on a summer day. 

***

Every night she lights her white candles and sets them free on the ocean. The number varies at times, sometimes as many as scores that together glow brightly enough so she can see them even after the tide takes them away. She does this exactly as the sun sinks beneath the horizon, in the twilight hours where it is possible to bridge both night and day. It is like trying to send blessings through time.

No matter the number, there are always six particular ones, for two girls and four boys. Her children, lost and far away in a strange time. Now, she adds another candle, for another girl that perhaps she did not raise, but who holds as much of Edea's self within her as any child of her own flesh might have. As she lights them, she closes her eyes and prays wordlessly to a merciful goddess who wept an ocean, perhaps because She realized her own mortal children would die. It is as grave as any magic ritual and sometimes, there is enough strength in old beliefs to give them a magic of their own. She sets them on the water, one by one, and watches them drift away. 

In this way, the ones that she loves may return to her safely.


End file.
